gathering together on the rug

The early morning is full of teaching and learning opportunities. It is a time for the community to come together over a greeting, share or reflection. We always start our meeting on the edge of the rug, standing tall. We stretch up high, recognizing personal space, by slowly bringing our arms down. Once our hands hang at our sides, the children bring their bodies down. We take one scoot back, as we must fit many bodies around our rug! As I've previously shared, when we greet one another, it is expected that we greet with our whole body. The children turn slightly towards their community member, look, and respond. Some of our greetings we've learned and practiced;

Pass the stone or wooden heart - passing the love with a friendly good morning.

A wave with a good morning and a peer's name.

The butterfly greeting, connecting hands together to make the wings of a butterfly.

Rolling a ball across the rug to a peer with a joyful, Hi _____ !

Passing a drum around the oval and drumming the parts (syllables) in your name.

Singing, Who Came to School Today, with a dance in the middle.

Singing a shortened version of Willaby Wallaby, with a focus on individual names and rhyme.

Following our greeting, we often have a quick share. The quick share is a structured share in which I invite the children to think about a hope for the day, reflect on an experience, or reflect on their role and personal goal for the day. I pull 4 - 5 names at random and transcribe the children's words. We often have a quick share at our closing circle as well! Some questions or invitations for share;

How will you help our community today?

What zone are you in and why?

What is your hope for the day?

How will you be a kind friend today?

What do you want to learn?

What did you work hard on today?

Did you laugh today? What made you laugh?

The children then move into their four rows to review our schedule and morning message - all full of literacy and math concepts!

On this particular morning message, we talked about a T-Chart and collecting data. Each Kindergartener wrote their name on a sticky note and added it to our chart. We then counted and compared. We talked about which number is more and how you can show which number is more. As we notice and discuss, I record children's observations and knowledge.

This message encouraged finding a letter in written text as well as counting and recording how many. On this day, the children were letter detectives, hearing the letter T in many words and finding the letter T in books and print throughout the classroom.







Your name is a word. Words have letters. How many letters in your name?

 

 

We also come together on our rug for number corner, a time in our day to talk about the date, the calendar, making predictions, how many days we've been in school, and playing various math games. Our rug is a space to gather for read alouds, stories, community meetings, and to revisit documentation and conversation about our community work.